Intrigued despite the standard misgivings – although what possible danger could he present in broad daylight in an open-air market with scores of people around? – I could not help asking curiously, ‘How did you know I was English?’
He smiled at me, an attractive smile; he was pretty attractive all round if you go for the Fred Sirieix type. Tallish, with a close beard and buzz-cut scalp, he was dressed in the classic American preppy style with light-coloured chinos and a denim shirt with a knitted grey tie under a pale-grey, flecked-tweed jacket. His eyes, very dark, regarded me with a singular intensity, as if I were a specimen under a microscope. Yet his manner was easy and relaxed.
‘How do you think?’ he said and grinned again as he said this, but as if I amused him, which made me bristle slightly.
‘I haven’t the slightest idea,’ I replied coldly.
His coffee arrived at this point, along with a plate bearing a slice ofsocca, the chickpea flatbread that is a speciality snack of Nice. It smelt delicious. He saw me looking at it.
‘Can I order some for you?’ he asked politely. Despite an instinct to refuse, temptation overcame me. The fact was I was extremely hungry, as, apart from the breakfast croissant, I hadn’t eaten properly for at least twenty-four hours.
‘Thank you, that would be lovely.’
He summoned a waiter.
‘It’s your hair,’ he explained in answer to my question, cutting a neat little slice of hissocca, popping it into his mouth and chewing rapidly. ‘The colour of your hair. So very blonde…donc,’ he shrugged his shoulders as if that said it all, ‘English.’
‘I could be Swedish.’
He reared back slightly. ‘Areyou Swedish?’
‘No.’
‘That’s just as well because I don’t speak Swedish.’
‘Anyway,’ I remarked, ‘everybody has blonde hair these days.’
‘True, but it’s not natural.’
‘How do you know mine is?’
‘I’m an expert.’
At this there was a pause. Oh dear, I thought, perhaps he was a hairdresser. That would be in line with the schmooze. Male hairdressers go in for it. I dated a hairdresser once and all he kept saying was that I needed to change my conditioner. Before I could ask, however, the man sharing my table asked me what I was doing inNice. Was I on holiday? I told him, no, I was working here as a chef, a temporary chef.
‘What about you? Are you on holiday?’
‘No, I am on business. I live in Brussels; I am Belgian.’ Finishing hissocca, he wiped his fingers on the paper napkin provided and stretched his right hand across the table to me. ‘Jules Croisset, Madame,’ he said with old-fashioned courtesy as we shook. ‘How do you do?’
Feeling we’d got rather beyond formalities, I nonetheless replied in kind.
‘Alix,’ he repeated thoughtfully, winning himself a place as one of the very few people in my life to pronounce my name correctly without having it spelt out for them. Then again, it might just have been his accent. ‘That is a pretty name.’
‘Thank you.’ Mysoccaarrived. I started to eat, trying not to gobble, but he looked on approvingly.
‘Delicious, isn’t it? For street food, the Cours Saleya is one of the best places in the world.’
My mouth full, I nodded vigorous agreement.
‘Yet, did you know, Alix, that this, the Cours Saleya,’ he waved a hand at our surroundings, ‘was once the haunt of intellectuals?’
I shook my head. ‘Really?’
‘Yes, really. Writers, artists, this was where theintelligentsiawould congregate. Here is where many of them would dine.’
‘I thought intellectuals never ate.’
‘Pouf!’ He puffed out his lips in that archetypal French sound of dismissal at which I smothered a grin because it made him sound like something out of’Allo ’Allo!–except he had said he was Belgian.
